A few days ago, developer United Front announced they are currently working on a new game called Triad Wars which will be set within the same universe as their previous sleeper hit Sleeping Dogs, a Hong Kong crime epic which was also a spiritual threequel of last generation’s True Crime series. As someone who thoroughly enjoyed Sleeping Dogs, my interest is naturally piqued, but I also can’t help but wonder what sort of game Triad Wars will end up being.

Sleeping Dogs’ publisher Square Enix hasn’t been shy about voicing their interest in the mobile games market, yet fans aren’t quite as enthused given the below-average quality of recent Square Enix mobile games like Deus Ex: The Fall. I doubt many fans would be happy if Triad Wars ended up being a shoddy mobile game with a Sleeping Dogs wrapper wrapped around it. With a title like Triad Wars, United Front could theoretically take the game in any number of directions but I’m crossing my fingers that mobile isn’t one (or at least the *only*) of them.

The lack of a “Sleeping Dogs” moniker in the game’s title leads me to believe Triad Wars will likely be a spinoff game that doesn’t star Sleeping Dogs protagonist Wei Shen (or at least doesn’t involve him directly). The game’s title does support the theory of Triad Wars perhaps being some sort of online-focused competitive shooter with players being able to join one of several factions within the over-encompassing Triad crime network and then battling it out over various territories around Hong Kong. The lack of any form of structured multiplayer in Sleeping Dogs would support this theory but, until we know more, it’s still just a theory.

Of course, given the sheer amount of polish and detail that went into making Sleeping Dogs’ virtual rendition of Hong Kong feel like a living, breathing world, it would seem like kind of a waste to just slap the Sleeping Dogs brand onto an otherwise generic competitive shooter and call it a day, especially when you consider the fact that the shooting elements weren’t even the core focus of Sleeping Dogs. Maybe Triad Wars could keep the multiplayer elements but also add in a strong story-driven element as well.

Imagine a scaled-down version of what Rockstar is attempting with Grand Theft Auto Online; being able to create and customize your own Triad gangster and then work your way up through the criminal ranks by completing both solo and group-oriented PvE story missions and competitive modes. Having to deal with both rival gangsters as well as the Hong Kong police (maybe even getting to engage in a martial arts tussle with Wei Shen himself!) while guiding your custom-created gangster through the virtual streets of Hong Kong sure does sound fun doesn’t it?

All this hopeful speculation makes waiting around to learn more about Triad Wars even harder. United Front has promised more details sometime in early 2014 but, for now, all we can do is wait, ponder, speculate, and hope whatever Triad Wars is, that it manages to build upon Sleeping Dogs’ already strong showing.

Ever since the old-school days of pen & paper role playing games, when players had no other choice other than to hunker around a table with dice in one hand and a soft drink in the other, vertical progression has been a staple of the RPG formula. This concept transferred over well to the digital/online space when massively multiplayer games such as Ultima Online and Everquest started showing up in the mid to late 90’s. But now that we’ve officially entered the 21st century, is giving players a giant mountain of vertical progression to climb really the best way to hold their interest?

I suppose it all boils down to a matter of perspective. Some players relish the opportunity to grind through hours upon hours of content, others loath it. Some players feel that access to “endgame” content is something that must be earned through a hefty time investment, others would gladly resort to paying real money in order to speed the process along. It’s no secret that today’s MMO developers have to carefully balance these and other factors if they hope to attain and keep a large playerbase but I’m still left wondering if players are going to be as tolerant of hefty vertical progression requirements three, five, even ten years from now.

I know I won’t.

Let’s look at the average MMO of today; upon first release, many have a max character level cap of between 50 and 70. If a particular MMO does well enough to spawn expansions and updates, one of the very first things the developers do is raise the level cap in order to give max-level players more incentive to buy said expansion. Now we have MMO’s with max-level caps of 80, 85, 90, some have even reached 100.

Imagine there were two different MMO’s you were interested in playing; one had a max level cap of 70, the other 90. For an average/casual MMO player, such a scenario wouldn’t lead to many positive conclusions; you’d either end up growing bored/burnt out on one and focus on the other or you’d try to continue playing them equally and risk getting burned out on both. So, if the problem is then how to keep players coming back even without all the grind and vertical progression, where is the solution?

One possibility would be finding *other* ways to incorporate grinding, preferably on a more horizontal plane. Imagine an MMO where your character could choose from several different “paths” (crafting, PvE combat, and PvP combat); each path would have a selection of different classes or professions tied to it with each path having a separate level cap of 20-30. Players who wanted to focus on one path could do so, as could players wanting to level two or even all three paths; allowing them to zero in on whatever MMO aspects they enjoyed most.

To help keep players around even after reaching the low level-cap for a particular path, developers could focus more on giving players tangible incentives such as max-level advancement systems like reputation grinds (World of Warcraft), a massive amount of skills/abilities to earn and customize (Guild Wars), or even new quests/dynamic events to play through (Guild Wars 2/The Secret World). While the risk of max-level boredom would be slightly increased, the trade-off would be a significant *decrease* in tedium and thus risk of getting burnt out on the game. I for one would be much more inclined to play an MMO that didn’t gate all of its endgame content behind countless hours of grinding levels and instead focused on allowing players to do what they enjoyed minus the tedium.

Another possibility could be to abolish levels altogether and instead focus on other areas such as player-commerce, combat, and crafting. I have to admit the idea of an MMO where every player started on an even playing field and, instead of focusing on accruing xp and levels, focused on gathering, crafting, trading, and even fighting for cosmetic rewards. Again the risk of player boredom would have to be carefully balanced against player interest and participation but I think such a concept could work if done right.

But, at the end of the day, I’m just one MMO player out of tens of millions and my opinion isn’t shared by all. Hopefully someday MMO developers will find a way to make, if not every MMO player, at least a vast majority of players happy. I just hope that down the road I’m not struggling to reach level caps of 120 and higher. I’ve got little enough free time as it is…..

In the PC gaming market of today, developers and publishers are under more and more pressure to not only deliver great games, but deliver them as quickly as they can. But when speed of development comes at the price of quality and polish, is it fair to charge players for the game initially with the promise that the game will be completed (through post-release updates) down the road?

One of the really nice things about today’s internet-driven world is that, even after a game is released to the public, it still isn’t technically “finished.” New innovations such as post-release patches, updates, expansion packs, and DLC help add longevity to many games long after their respective release dates. Post-release support can also help solve technical issues such as bugs and glitches that weren’t found during the game’s testing phase. However, this same innovation can also lead developers to sometimes cut corners or delay promised features under the justification that they’ll just add them after the game goes live.

Now, this isn’t to say game developers have gotten lazy or sloppy, there’s a whole myriad of reasons why a game could be released in the less-than-complete manner that was originally promised. But is paying full-price for an incomplete product something that game publishers can continue asking gamers to do? In essence, players are paying for the promise that the game they’re buying will one day in the near future be the complete product the developer advertised; a promise the developer has no obligation to keep since they already have the player’s money.

Again I don’t mean to paint game developers and publishers as money-swindling crooks, many developers who were forced to release unfinished games often fulfill their promises to support the game with post-release updates and sometimes even go above and beyond their promises.

When Spiral Games Studios’ Orion: Dino Beatdown was released to the public last year, it was far from the amazing co-op action/adventure that the studio promised it would be. Rather than chock it up to a loss, Spiral Games took all the criticism garnered from Orion’s disastrous launch to heart, completely retooled and revamped the game’s format and features, and re-released it as Orion: Dino Horde. The game’s rebirth has been met with near universal positive reception and also includes features that weren’t even in the original design concept of Dino Beatdown. Even better, as a gesture of good faith, Spiral Games gave everyone who purchased Dino Beatdown free upgrades to Dino Horde.

Despite the redemption story of Orion: Dino Horde, I’m hoping the trend of charging gamers full-price for half-baked games and flimsy promises doesn’t become more prevalent than it already has. Take, for example, Dark Vale Games’ recent release Forge; a fun yet flawed PvP-focused medieval/fantasy brawler. Despite being advertised as a game that contains “the best aspects of MMO and FPS class-based combat”, as of this writing Forge has roughly five different playable classes, a handful of different maps and game modes, and, as always, the ever-present promise of “more to come.”

Other examples such as EA’s disastrous SimCity reboot, the spectacular train wreck that was Gearbox’s Aliens: Colonial Marines, even the promised PvP features of Blizzard’s Diablo III prove that even major developers and publishers aren’t above using the “promise now, deliver later” formula. If game companies expect gamers to keep shelling out $40, $50, even $60 for their products, they have to start doing a better job of making sure what we’re paying for is a complete product; not just an unfinished game and a string of promises.

In a day and age when the fields of game development and innovation should be moving forward by leaps and bounds, sadly it seems many companies and studios are content with letting them slip in the opposite direction.

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Ever since its original debut in Epic Games’ Gears of War 2, the concept behind the popular “Horde Mode” gametype has gone on to become one of the core pillars of co-op multiplayer gameplay.

While predominantly featured in shooters such as Halo (Firefight), Mass Effect (Galaxy at War), and even Saints Row (“Whored” Mode), lately it has started showing up in other, non-shooter multiplayer environments such as the recent console MOBA Guardians of Middle Earth (Survival Mode) and even action hack-and-slash games like God of War: Ascension (Trial of the Gods). However, there’s one genre in which Horde Mode seems strangely absent given its emphasis on social and often cooperative gameplay: massively multiplayer online games.

With new innovations such as instanced dungeons and quest areas, group-oriented events and activities, and even popular features such as World of Warcraft’s “LFD” (Looking for Dungeon) and “LFR” (Looking For Raid) tools or Lord of the Rings Online’s Skirmish system, I find it very odd that a concept as simple to understand yet fun to play as Horde Mode has eluded the MMO landscape for so long, especially considering how many new MMO’s are released annually.

Perhaps my exposure to MMO’s isn’t as robust as some other players’, but in my twelve or so years of playing them (my first ever MMO was the original Everquest) I’ve never seen a feature or activity in any MMO I’ve played that had the same sort of purist formula which makes Horde Mode so appealing. Granted I can recall certain dungeons or quests or other activities that borrowed certain elements of Horde Mode, but, for me at least, the standard Horde Mode encompasses these traits:

A team of players, usually 4-6, against waves of increasingly difficult A.I. enemies

Players must either defend a certain object or location from the A.I. enemies or simply survive for as long as they can

In-between waves, players can somehow give themselves temporary bonuses such as items or fortifications to help them defend against the next wave

Experience points are granted for each enemy killed and an experience bonus is granted for reaching certain wave checkpoints or for surviving all of the waves

The mode is repeatable and replayable, giving players an alternate means of advancement

As I said before, some MMO’s have come close, but I have yet to play an MMO that offered a pure, repeatable mode in which the only objective was to survive as long as I could against a horde of A.I. opponents. I feel such a mode could easily work within most traditional MMO’s for several reasons. First, it would give more co-op-minded players (like yours truly) an alternate route of advancement in addition to questing and dungeon grinding. Second, it could provide a new endgame activity for those who weren’t interested in raiding or PvP. Third, the rewards earned from Horde Mode could be unique and could even benefit other MMO activities such as crafting.

I’ll admit there are times when I want to play an MMO but I really don’t feel like waiting around for a dungeon group, especially in MMO’s that don’t have a built-in dungeon-finder tool (such as Guild Wars 2) or grinding through a bunch of quests or getting my butt kicked in PvP (as I often do). A Horde type of mode would be a simple, easy to understand, and, if done right, incredibly fun alternative that also wouldn’t be a very big time commitment. If you end up spending a half hour or so making it through the entire game, great! If you only managed to make it to wave five or ten or whatever, hey, at least you still got a bunch of experience points and maybe other rewards to show for your efforts.

To me, an MMO Horde Mode seems like a win-win situation. It draws players in with its simple yet fun format and it probably wouldn’t be too terribly taxing on developers to implement. What do you think? Would you want to see a Horde Mode gametype in your favorite MMO?

Check out my other posts here at “Inner Thoughts of a Quiet Gamer” and be sure to read my other works over to vgu.tv.